£1-£1 Cash game at my local casino
Cash games started about 30 minutes before this hand.
Hero has only played one hand so has no real image.
Villian has only just sat down so I have no reads on him. Looks like your standard ABC old gentleman. (i'm assuming he has a tight pre flop range until proven otherwise)

Effective stacks £132

H has KJ on BTN
fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, H opens for £6, SB Calls £6, BB folds.

Flop KJ4
(£13)
SB Checks
H bets £10
SB Calls £10

(£33)
Turn 8
SB Checks
H bets £23
SB Calls £23

(£79)
River 8
SB Glances at my stack and asks how much i'm playing. He sees I have 3 £25 chips and 3 £5 chips left and throws in £90 in the same colour. I ask if he has 44 he smiles at me and then goes back into stone-face mode.

(£169) £90 to call.
So I'm really hating life right now. A gross spot where i'm regretting putting so much of my stack in post. What does everyone think of my line here? sizing?
I'm struggling to construct a range for V which takes this line? on the turn his range looks something like 44,KJ,KQ,KT. Any hands which you think could also be in there?
Facing the river overbet donk shove his range is now polarized which leaves him with just 44 (I dont include JJ because I assume he 3b from the blinds against BTN open and we have blocker)

I dont know how spewy villain is so it really feels like a coinflip as to whether this is a boat or air.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated thank you!

If you really think it's a coin flip then you are getting the odds to call. I'm not sure it is that close.

Observations:
1. You haven't really given any indication of weakness. K* or TT type hand is a large part of your range.

2. I think even average players (like me) feel they can't really rep an 8 here

3. River bet-sizing doesn't look like marginal value (i.e., Kx)

So if this is a bluff, he can't really rep much since you'd expect Kx to check/call and 8 is unlikely.

So assigning 25% of the time as either value bet, bluff, or same hand feels conservative I think. You aren't quite getting 3:1 so I think you can fold here.

Anyone see flaws in this logic?


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Because of this combo, donking an 8 is probably a good play for villain, right?



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I think that's a call. He's redoing 44 only. Nothing else makes sense. Wouldn't 44 raise the turn? I call there and expect to see QT very often

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This.

His line is so skewed and there's just such a narrow range of hands villain could do this with. It just makes it harder when I have no real tendancies or reads for villian and also considering his player type as an older gentleman - I figure it's so much less likely he's doing this as a bluff.

Results: Hero tank folds and gets shown A4o.

More on Turn please ... at least 26 (double your Flop bet) up to 30 IMO. Play this like AK is scared of the club draw now .. and you set up for your stack better on the River. A larger bet here also makes it less likely that you would fold to his shove on the River ... which means he would bluff less often IMO. You might miss out on some 'extra' bluffing chips, but you get to showdown .. which IMO is more important.

Calling this down most of the time. As played he would never suspect you already had 2 pair. To me, this looked like a missed club draw/bluff ... and since the 8c hit the Turn I don't give him an 8 (maybe JcXx). You have too strong of a hand against this board to be folding on a regular basis. I hope you didn't show or tell. I am willing to lose to J8 all day here as played.

Take a look at your overall game. He saw/sensed something from you that showed weakness or that you were not comfortable with the 8 on the River. This either came from an immediate live tell or previous history that he was drawing from. GL

counterfeited two pair? the only way you are counterfeited is if he has aces, which would be a crazy way to play aces.

I am snap calling this and the only hand that beats me is 44. which is a damn cooler, top two versus bottom set, which I really don't have that much of a problem stacking off with that shallow on the flop.

but if V really has 44, I would expect a lead on the turn, or a check raise on the turn. waiting until the river is really giving up some value.

also, I would expect V to either lead or check raise with either K8 or J8 on the turn. your hand is pretty underrepped and he would probably think that two pair on that turn would be good.

48 would be nasty.

so you're calling here with Jx, Kx, Ac4c and so on?

Just fold. I know nothing makes sense, but unless you have some inkling of a read on a guy, at 1/2 this is a fold. I get slammed all the time by hands like this thinking, he can't have played xx this way only to have xx. We make money because so many opponents have zero thought process. In cases like this, we also lose money because of it. I'm starting to avoid these spots and it's helping.

He may be bluffing, and if he is you'll have that read, but majority of blank 1/2ers our hand is no good.

+1 for betting more on the turn for better stack sizes on river.

but it looks a lot like AK, KQ, etc. Is hero having AK vs. KJ that different here?

i think he basically has a bluff catcher, right? his choice here is not really that different than if he was holding TT right? or are there worse Ks and Js in villains range that he is turning into bluffs (or doing weird value bet)?

Yes, his line is so FOS that it doesn't matter what we are holding. I'm never folding a K or a J there. However this hand won't be played like that if you're holding Jx imo

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Your hand isn't counterfeited, and this is an extremely easy call on the river.

There are close to zero 8x in V's range given flop action. We beat all other two pair hands except AA, which is very unlikely given PF. V reps stupidly thin here - only 44 (3 combos) and JJ (discounted to 2 combos given PF). We beat a literal crap ton of other hands.

KJ is way to strong to fold here. It very well could be a Kx that thinks he has picked up a J kicker now that the board has paired. This V knows Hero has a Kx. I think V is using a live tell on Hero somehow. I would like to have seen the flow of the action to determine this better.

I can understand Jx/A4 folding here without a real read on the spot. I can even lay down QQ here some of the time.

Normally, yes, at 1/2 you need to 'beware the speech' but I just felt something different on this one. GL

yes very true. im going to try this line next time i flop a set vs. thinking PFR that c-bets a decent amount. seems like it's pretty profitable and low variance.

in a vacuum, is it a profitable strategy to call river overbets against unknown 1/2 players when their line doesn't make sense? or is the donk a big contributor to this?

If position was reversed, flop and turn goes bet/call and for some reason we check the river (indulge me for a second), would you still be calling his bet or does his line all of a sudden make a lot more sense?

If we reverse positions, it's a totally different hand. And this response was not in a vacuum. It was given all the information we learn from each street. If you're looking for a rule that says fold to river bets from unknowns, you're doing it wrong.

Analyze every street, assign him a range and keep adjusting that range everytime new information comes in. If he's thin value betting with K9 and you called with Jx, make a note and move on. This call won't win everytime, but it will win enough because he's repping absolutely nothing there.

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Right, I'm simply trying to isolate what it is about this hand that doesn't make sense. It's basically the donk bet on the river right? Or do you think there is something else weird here?

And the donk bet is, in your opinion, more often a weird bluff and not a good hand worried about hero checking behind from an unknown?

If so, would you say it is a bluff
1) almost always
2) fairly often
3) just over 50% of the time

I obviously had a different initial reaction to this hand than you, and am just trying to get a clearer understanding of where our analysis diverges.


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what read were you looking for?

K4 got counterfeited, KJ didn't.

His range is almost never polarized when he asks for a chip count. It's a completely unnecessary question for a polarized range, and as such, he would refrain from asking to avoid giving off a signal. He's asking how much a showdown will cost, so he almost always has showdown value.

The donk bet is the only thing that really makes this hand strange as its not something that happens too often at live 1-1. I assumed villain can only bluff with QT. He doesnt seem like the type of player to

1) turn his small pairs/ Jx into a bluff
2) make a weird float with ATC in an attempt to bluff turn and river because he expects my BTN open to be super wide

The overbet also throws me slightly as ive showed significant strength throughout so villain really has no reason to risk circa 80% of his stack.
Villain is a rec player so I just dont expect that here and without reads I give villain credit.

In my opinion it felt like he didnt want me to check behind.

Thanks for all of the information provided. Being privvy to your thought processes has made me realise this should almost never be a fold. I tend to walk right into the top of villains range at these stakes whenever theres any sort of weird bet so I may have selective memory in that respect.

The only three hands in his range that beat us are K8 and J8 and 44. ALL of these are raising the turn most of the time. We beat everything else in his range. And according to the board and our hand, we block a few of these combos anyway.

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if the first 8 came on the flop instead of the turn, is this still a relatively easy call?

Well, definitely not AS EASY, because V is getting to showdown with an 8 in the hole much more often. I.e. he is showing down a different range of hands and this range contains more 8s.

We need to think about T8 clubs, 98 clubs, T8 spades, 98 spades. And his range now DOES seem polarized, so it's unlikely he's betting a random suited K, or KQ etc.

Folding is kind of insane unless you can remove AK from his range. We only need like 35% equity to call here. If he doesn't call pf with K8s/J8s, 3 bets KK+ a lot, our equity is even better.



Board: 4hJsKc8c8s
Equity Win Tie
BU 40.00% 32.00% 8.00% { KdJd }
SB 60.00% 52.00% 8.00% { KK+, JJ, 44, AKs, KJs, K8s, J8s, AKo, KJo }



Board: 4hJsKc8c8s
Equity Win Tie
BU 54.55% 48.48% 6.06% { KdJd }
SB 45.45% 39.39% 6.06% { KK+, JJ, 44, AKs, KJs+, K8s, J8s, AKo, KJo+ }